Statement on the Death of Norma McCorvey, ‘Roe’ Plaintiff Turned Pro-life Advocate

Norma McCorvey, also known as Jane Roe, the plaintiff of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, died today at age 69. After being a key part of the Supreme Court case which struck down state limits on abortion and ushered in abortion on-demand across the United States, McCorvey had a conversion on the issue of abortion and became a fierce pro-life advocate.

Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser offered the following statement on her passing:

“Norma suffered tremendously at the hands of those who cared more about the institution of abortion than this courageous woman’s life. She learned first-hand the falsehood of the lie that ‘abortion liberates.’ She found instead that it is an insidious invitation to misery for so many women and death for more than fifty million unborn children since the day of the fateful Roe decision. The early feminists were correct. In the words of one editorial in The Revolution, the mouthpiece of the suffragette movement: ‘[abortion] will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime.’

“Ironically, and thankfully, Norma McCorvey, like Sandra Cano in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton, did not abort the child whose life was exploited by the lawyers seeking to impose abortion on request.  Ultimately, Norma’s story after Roe was not one of bitterness but of forgiveness. She chose  healing and reconciliation in her Christian faith. She overcame the lies of the abortion industry and its advocates and spoke out against the horror that still oppresses so many. Of Roe she said, ‘I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name.’ In her memory and in her honor, we will carry on that work and we pray for her eternal peace.”

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